Take Charge of Your Emotions Dec 7th, Session Summary

Thank you all for your participation last week, your discussion enlivened the evening. We are not the only ones with difficult emotions :) that need to be processed.Last week we discussed the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behaviors . We connected it with the Bhagavad Gita verses 2.62 and 2.63 linked for your reference.


This week on Dec 7th we will discuss:
-  How we are trained to suppress emotions and numb ourselves in difficult situations
- The detrimental effects of suppressing our emotions to our health and to our future behaviors.
-  We will do exercises on learning how to connect with our feelings

By connecting with your feelings, you activate your buddhi (intelligence), to process your feelings. Without confronting your feelings, the buddhi, also known as the fire of mental digestion, cannot digest those feelings and we remain victims of our own feelings. Be open to learning what your feelings are telling you.

You can view Last Week's presentation at this link.

On Motherhood- an excerpt from a Book

We came across a nice passage about motherhood from the book Difficult Mothers: Understanding and Overcoming Their Power by Dr. Terri Apter


Relationship with the mother and how it influences other relationships over a lifetime.

• The way we see and value ourselves is influenced by her view of us. How we behave others to behave towards us is in part a function of early interactions with our closest family members
• Recent findings in brain science have deepened our understanding of a mother's pervasive influence. Our relationship with her becomes a model for all intimate relationships. It shapes the circuits of our infant brain- circuits that are used to understand and manage our own emotions and to read other people's thoughts and feelings. 
• In all observed cultures, in all recorded times, human infants engage intimately with the person who cares for them, and in all recorded times, in all observed cultures, the parents who introduces an infant to the interpersonal world of love and dependence is the a mother. A mother and baby lock together in a mutual gaze , each looking back to the other.This early prolonged eye contact is so important to the growing human brain that evolution has left nothing to chance. A brain stem reflex ensures that the baby turns to look at the mother's face.
  
• Until recently , so-called experts on babies advised parents that babies could not really see a mother and that babies had no concept of what a person was for many months or even years after their first all- absorbing introduction to their mother, but new findings show something very different. The areas of the brain that adults use to recognize and respond to faces are active from birth. from the moment a baby looks into his mother's face, he sees a person.He sees someone who expresses feelings and whose expressions show responses to him. This interaction triggers high levels of hormones that flood the infant with pleasure. These endogenous opiates are a healthy version of external opiates like heroin- that block pain and produce pleasure.They reward the infant as he engages in the primary lessons of vital interpersonal relationships. sight is not the only trigger for these pleasure inducing chemicals. Newborns orient their heads to the sound of their mother's voice, and they rapidly learn to recognize and follow its tone and rhythm.
• They stare longer at an image if it smells like their mother. The instinct a mother has to hold her baby on her left side(which is wired to the right side of the brain) facilitates right hemisphere to right hemisphere communication, the part of the brain that specializes in the emotional self. As she cradles the baby on her left side, she communicates with the infants right brain and the infant's behavior stimulates the mother's right brain.
• Even negative emotions of fear can positively stimulate a baby's growth, when the fight or flight system is activated, the rate of breathing increases, along with the heart rate and blood pressure, but as a mother soothes a troubled infant,he feels the ebb of negative emotions and has his first lessons in the crucial task of regulating his own emotions
• Mother's brain also undergoes changes- it is stimulated to
  
  new growth and learning as she engages with her infant. In response to infant's cries and laughter, the parent's brain activity reveals a special pattern. In addition, the complex brain structures that control our emotions the limbic system undergo structural changes as we engage in parenting behavior. These changes increase a mother's ability to pick up cues from the infant.
• As a mother and baby interact , each gets smarter. Each is engrossed by the sights and sounds and movements of the other, each is hunry to learn the other's language. Their mutual focus is so intricately coordinated that is has been defined as an elaborately flowing dance wherein the participating partners get to know themselves through each other. Human psychology as we know it begins in this primary relationship. A passionate and absorbing bond with his or her primary caregiver, who is almost always the mother, is the infant's first experience of loving and being one person in a loving pair.

What happens if a mother does not respond?
If the mother's face becomes frozen the baby becomes distressed. The baby seems outraged that his signals are ignored. It is not easy to soothe a baby who has experienced this interruption in the relational conversation.

Reference Point of Love

• These early interactions form a reference point for what each of us seeks in people we love, to be seen and understood. Children form many relationships with other relatives and with friends that impact on their lives, but the emotional signaling between infant and a mother forms the core sense of being a person with feelings who can communicate feelings to others
• A key experience of having a difficult mother , whether we are three months old or thirty years old, is of the negative of that positive eye to eye engagement. With a difficult mother , our efforts to shape our mother's view are constantly frustrated. we feel ignored, erased, annihilated. We doubt who we are and what we feel. Perhaps our signals are interpreted as bad or mean or selfish. We then inhabit a world of shame in which being known entails criticism and derision.
• Children work hard to make sense of their interpersonal experiences.
  
  "Who is reliable?" and "who offers me warmth and comfort and feeding?" and "whose touch and smell are associated with these?" are questions intrinsically related their survival. As the rudimentary sense of self and other person becomes more sophisticated, so do questions about their meanings:"what does that behavior indicate about me?" and "Does the person I am trying to communicate with understand me?" and "Do my feelings resonate with others?" and "Am I really communicating?"
• We continue to be particularly vulnerable to a mother's responses, even as we develop very different bonds with other people who see and discover us in different ways. for most parents and their children, the experience of belonging to each other has its ups and downs, but whatever the trip ups and scrapes along the way, the relationship is largely comforting, supportive and expansive.
• But what does it feel like to suffer more pain in a relationship than comfort and pleasure? what if those profound experiences of connection and embeddedness are so uncomfortable that, in reaching out for comfort and security, we are restricted and punished? what if we have to distrust ourselves or discount our own wishes or constantly police our thoughts and actions to gain comfort from the person we depend upon? when this dilemma shapes a son's or daughter's experience of a mother, I use the shorthand of a difficult mother to refer to a relationship that has many parts and many contexts and perspective.

Does it mean Vedic culture considers all men to be intelligent?

We read in the post an understanding of why there is an apparent contradiction in the scriptures about a woman's intelligence . Depending upon how a woman is situated she maybe a shelter of maternity or a shelter of sexuality in the human society.

Now does this mean that only women can succumb to the lower nature due to bodily identification and that all men are free from bodily identification? And that all men are intelligent?

Seeing through the lens of the Vedic Definition of intelligence that we discussed earlier anyone who is not able to discriminate between matter and spirit is considered of low intelligence.

Even if men in general have a better ability at rational thought- but if

they are inclined towards a material conception of life versus a spiritual one- then that is not the sign of an intelligent person.

The environment in Kali Yuga is full of various distractions- whether the soul is in the man's body or the woman's body one must remain very vigilant and work hard to progress in their spiritual life.
Examples of Bharat Maharaja and Ajamila are there in the Srimad Bhagavatam to show how a moment of inattention and also staying away from the association of devotees can throw one off the path of devotional service.

Since the dharmic principles that kept society in check have been lost- there is a dearth of examples of model behaviors of men and women around us. This calls for proper training of Boys and Girls and men and woman.

Addressing the apparent contradiction - Women are considered less intelligent vs a A Good wife means Good intelligence?

There are cases we see that women are more intelligent than men. But this statement cannot also refer to the soul because at the level of the soul because at the level of the soul both men and women are the same?

Where is this coming from if it is not related at the material level and not at the spiritual level?

Actually it is related at the interaction of material and spiritual level. As we discussed in a previous post that due to the Breakdown of Dharmic principles women as a class are left harmed. Although in many ways they are more free, they continue to be taken (even by themselves) as a sex object and to be used as a symbol for sexuality. The material-sexual atmosphere increases their material-sexual tendency and furthers them away from their devoted and loving nature. In fact, this transition between the higher nature of a saint/ mother/ nurturer to the lower nature of a prostitute/ seducer is rapid for women, since these are two aspects of their prakriti nature

Lower Nature:

• Mis-identification of the spirit with matter is much stronger when the spirit is entrapped in the women's body.
• To a large extent if the women is not spiritually minded her sense of self identity and self worth comes from the bodily form and therefore to understand that the self is not the body is that much more difficult.Women are more easily swayed to identify with their material body on account of its external beauty
• Another aspect of this misidentification is that the female body leads to a excess of emotionality as compared to rationality. 

That's why bodily identification increases sign of less intelligent.

• Women are less intelligent is not to restrict their capacities and potential and denigrate them  but to recognize that different bodies give us different limitations and endowment but to minimize the harm from the limitations and maximize the benefit from the endowments.The Social order in which women were primarily mothers and not allurers was standard in the Vedic Culture.

Higher Nature:

•  In Vedic Culture the role of maternity is emphasized over the sexuality. Shelters of maternity not sexuality when this is emphasized then the emotionality of women can be used to care for the family members especially the children . It can help them to grow, if the women can become a devotee then her emotionality can help her experience devotional emotions and pass them on to her children.
• So in this way, if women function as mothers primarily then whatever maybe the weakness of the particular body they have then the weakness doesnt harm them but it helps them and helps them help others. 

What goes on in modern society?

• In contrast modern society downplays and to some aspect denies the maternal aspect of women and it over hypes the sexual aspect of women. This leads to increase bodily consciousness among women and men.

Does Modern Society really respect women or does it dehumanize them as objects of pleasure?

• The modern society by treating women as sex symbols may give women more freedom and attention- but that doesn't lead to greater respect and security but it leads to greater insecurity and greater depersonalization. 
• When a women is seen just as a sex symbol then she is not seen as a person but as an object.
• When they are trained to be sex symbols when the sexual appeal decreases then the sense of self worth is lost- but if it is coming from her sense of identifying herself as a mother then a women cannot be a sex symbol throughout her life but she can always be a mother all her life. 
• That is why the maternal role of a mother should be emphasized and the sexual role she be minimized that is what is vedic culture does.
• The less intelligence is not to minimize women but to protect and cherish women so that their spirituality can be developed and cherished in a way that is beneficial to the full society and beneficial to themselves.

Does it mean Vedic Culture Considers all men to be intelligent?

References:

Why are women considered Less intelligent- Lecture by Hg Caitanya Carana Prabhu

A Woman's spiritual nature

What is the Vedic Definition of Intelligence?

Vedas define intelligence with three components- memory, knowledge and realization about the difference between matter and spirit

In vedic literatures intelligence is described as having three components

• Memory
• Memory connected with hearing- hear subject matters and memorize.
• Knowledge
• Then we contemplate by that contemplation we gain knowledge , by performing service combined with this contemplation we get knowledge.
• Power of discrimination:
• The third stage then we get from knowledge is realization which is the power to discriminate.

   In Vedic Literature the power of discrimination is considered the highest.

 Within discrimination- the power to discriminate between matter and spirit - this is considered the most important.

The first two aspects of intelligence is addressed everywhere but no university addresses the discrimination between matter and spirit.Out of 14 branches of knowledge, 13 deal with material world the 14th branch deals with transcendence. Srimad bhagavatam deals with discriminating between matter and spirit.

Thus in the Vedic culture an intelligent person is one who can distinguish between matter and spirit.Intelligence begins by understanding that I am not the body I am the soul.

Reference:
BVPS 1997-10-10 Varnashrama Seminar-04 Brahmacarya - Mayapur - beginning of the lecture

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences: Strengths and Weaknesses for men and women

Even though all of us are feminine souls (prakriti) with a masculine mindset (purusha), and although we all try to enjoy in the world as the master and as the center (and therefore repeatedly take birth after birth), in general it can be said that the male body is an imitation of the purusha principle and the woman’s body is an imitation of the prakriti principle. Hence, the nature of their activities in the world is different.

They are naturally attracted to each other, like the purusha and prakriti. The man is attracted to the woman as a protector and a giver of shelter, and the woman is attracted to the man in the mood of love and service.

Intelligence of men and women

The most fundamental difference between a man’s body and a woman’s body is found in the structure of their intelligence and emotions. This fundamental difference (manifested in a different brain structure) is meant to enable their various roles in society. 

Two sides of the brain- one side deals with emotions, the other deals with the analytical aspects. Men work with one side and the other - never both they may switch back and forth but its always on one side Women both sides constantly work - emotions and senses are always connected to one another. There may be more emphasis for one side or the other

This gives strengths and weaknesses to both parties.

• Dealing with philosophy:
• • For the men their strength is if they look at something especially philosophical -they can look at it purely analytically  without emotion -and say this is right this is wrong- reject the wrong. 
  • Their weakness is if they are emotional they don't actually analyze the situation. they just see what is the emotion and they move in the realm of the mind and go that way. 
  • Therefore they will do so many things- take an ism, take an issue and completely take it up without thinking what gain or loss may come or they become interested in sense gratification and absorb themselves without thinking of the consequences.
• Nurturing Role:
  • Whereas women, we see their strength is in the mood of a mother, means in the mood of mother- then the emotions are running at the same time one can analyze what is the best situation for dealing and helping others. 
  • A woman is emotionally wise and intuitive, and consequently she is very practical, soft, mentally strong, and can connect and reconcile contradictions. 
  • This gives her strength in developing nurturing relationships and creating a loving home for the children and husband.
  •  In the realm of emotions they can see what is the proper thing to do. Like we can see in the realm of the house they can decide the furniture is like this , the colors are like this put this here , there, etc - that is their expertise.
• Dealing with Children:
• • Or we can see the child is crying-because of the emotions the natural affection is there at the same time women can analyse "oh the child is hungry, tired, something is bothering them."
• •  Men cannot do that. Because of their emotions they feel they should do something for the child, but in that emotional state they cannot analyze what is wrong. If they try to analyze it then they would think- "what would I do with this anyway- its crying, its wet- like that" that is the strength of women . 
  • The weakness for the women is then when trying to purely analyze a philosophical subject or a practical situation one gets caught between understanding the situation this is correct, this is the philosophy this is correct- but also the emotion "Oh but what about this, someone may say that, this one may feel this".
• Dealing with the outside world:
• • For the man, the senses and emotions are separate, enabling him to cope with the harsh and competitive world outside without being harmed. His intelligence can analyze, separate, and differentiate more efficiently, because it is less emotionally involved.
  • Because of this connection between her emotions and her intelligence, sometimes it is not easy for her to separate them when necessary, especially in contact with the aggressive and rough world. Because of her physically weaker body, she tends to feel unprotected when not surrounded by a loving atmosphere (therefore, when women are forced to go out into this situation, they usually close up and toughen themselves, harming their soft feminine nature).
• Dealing with Distress:
• • She needs compassion, someone to listen to her, and someone to share with, while he needs practical solutions (when he offers her his practical solutions while she is distressed, it only annoys her). The sequence of her conversation moves from one emotional point to another, she loves spending time in heart-to-heart conversations, and discussions about others and their emotional world fascinate her. The man, however, is interested in practical-intellectual discussions, and his conversation progresses in a logical sequence. She is sensitive to subtleties and responds to them, while he might not even notice them, etc…
• Advantage of a woman's emotional nature in devotional service
  • Prabhupada did say that women’s soft-heartedness is, indeed, an aid in their Krishna consciousness, and that men’s tendency toward hard-heartedness can be an impediment. While a male body gives an overall advantage to a soul seeking realization of Krishna, a female body has two advantages–the tendency to accept and follow authority, and soft-heartedness.
  • “As soon as soft-hearted people such as women hear those transcendental pastimes of Lord Krsna, they immediately become attracted to Him. Soft-hearted women and girls are therefore very easily drawn to the Krsna consciousness movement. One who is thus drawn to the Krsna consciousness movement and tries to keep himself in constant touch with such consciousness certainly gets the supreme salvation, going back to Krsna in Goloka Vrndavana.” (krishna Book, chapter 90)
  • Why are women considered less intelligent:
  • Of course, being soft-hearted can also cause problems (all material facilities have their concurrent dangers), so that it is precisely the soft-hearted nature of women that demands protection: “woman are considered less intelligent. In the Bhagavad-gita… Their heart is very soft. Just like children, their heart is very soft. But their intelligence is not very sharp. ..They can be molded by another intelligent man to the proper channel. Therefore they require guidance. They require guidance.” (lecture Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.7.43 — Vrndavana, October 3, 1976)

Dharma (or a mood of service, commitment, and sensitivity to others) is designed to bridge and regulate the relationship between these two separate worlds, and make the cooperation between them conducive to spiritual advancement, until they reach full freedom from self-centeredness, or from the bodily identification of “I am a man”, “I am a woman”, returning back to the eternal spiritual nature – the prakriti nature.

References:

Refer lecture and earlier part of the transcript here.

Dharma- The combination of matter and spirit

Comment by HG Urmila Devi Dasi  for the article “Women are Less Intelligent?”

Examples from Shastra: 

Sita Devi requesting Rama to give up weapons during their exile.

Kasyapa and Diti

Lord Siva and Sati

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences

Today we will go through various studies to understand and appreciate Gender Differences between men and women. Our Creator - Lord Sri Krishna is Supremely wonderful. Understanding Gender differences is a great way to appreciate His creation and the thought behind it as well.

Men and Women have been created differently right from their physiology, to how they process information, to how they experience and express emotions all perfectly created to suit the role of being a man for men and for being a woman for women.

We will go through the data present in these links below:

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences: Physiology

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences: Social Behavior and Abilities

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences: Emotions

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences: Strengths and Weaknesses for men and women

We will also discuss how this difference in physiology affects decision making - we will see this from examples in shastra of Sita Devi, Sati and some other examples.